this question is about naming of floors etc...

in Sydney we tend to name the ground floor (the floor with a door on street level) as "Ground Floor"
floors in buildings are then numbered from G-1-2-3-4....

then we have lower ground 1, 2, 3... with 1 closest to the ground (as in mirror image 54321-G-(LG)12345... if you get the picture)

however, I know that in Melbourne (jokingly known as our arch rival city in Australia) it is more common to see buildings with no "ground floor", street level being named level 1....
with then "Basement" or "Below Ground" 1,2,3...


these are just general conventions, and in more complicated buildings things may be different, but I was wondering about the US style naming systems...

Do you have a GROUND FLOOR, or a level-1


anyway,
just after the local colour/touch to something I am trying out in a story, and seeing as Metropolis is supposedly based upon NYC, I presume that if there are local variations, this would be what I was looking for...
thansk

BY THE WAY


the reason I am after this is in my story I am dealing with travelling between the "GROUND floor" and near-by levels, so .....I want to help improve the orientation of readers so they do not get confused

In the US the ground floor and the first floor are the same thing. The floor above the ground floor is numbered as "2". Elsewhere in the world (like you said) the ground floor is a separate entity from the "first" floor. In US elevators I've seen the floor labeled as both "G" and "1". So you can take your pick. <g>

Does that make sense?

In the US the ground floor can also be called Lobby (L). Then if the lobby or ground floor has extremely high ceilings and has another floor within this space it is usually the mezzanine (Sp?). I worked in a hotel where the floors were Lobby, 1, 2 etc with no 13. There is usually no 13th floor in US buildings. However, when I lived in Richmond, VA I lived in a high rise apartment building on the 13th floor and it was numbered 13. So it just depends.

The floors below ground are named either B1, B2 with 1 being closes to ground. Now if the lower levels are used for parking then the are usually P1, P2. Or then again you can have B for basement then SB1, SB2 for subbasement.

So generally speaking there is no hard and fast rule.

Now for elevators. Not having traveled outside the US much I don't know what they do but I would imagine it would be the same. In really tall office buildings they put in banks of elevators that are "express" in that they don't go to all floors they cover a group of floors. Like 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 etc then with some covering all floors. That is so that if you are on say 9 and want to go up you don't have to go back down to the lobby to get one going up.

Britain has Ground floor (equivalent to the US first floor), then going up floors 1,2,3, etc. and going down basement, sub-basement, etc. or B1, B2 etc.

You also sometimes get mezzanine floors etc. between the ground floor and first floor - for example, a British hotel I stayed at recently had a ground floor, the lobby on the floor above that (which I think was otherwise used for things like the kitchens and other staff areas), then function rooms, bar and restaurant on the Mezzanine floor above that, then the guest bedrooms on floors 1,2, etc. above that. So the floor numbered as 1 would have been the US 4th floor!

There's a lot of variation on this depending on the layout of the building, of course. For example, that hotel was on a hill and had street entrances on the ground floor and lobby levels, and an entrance from the neighbouring shopping centre on the mezzanine floor, which was the same height as the street at the other end of the shopping centre.

Most places in the US -- unless they are pretty big, like a shopping mall -- start with the ground floor being one, the next one up is 2 and so forth. If you go down a level from the first floor it's usually the basement level, which is completely different than a basement in a house. It can house offices, a parking garage, or, in a hospital, places like offices, X-ray, Pharmacy or CT scan facilities like we have at our local Kaiser.

Nan

I forgot a slightly weird one - my own house, which is divided into two two-storey flats. The ground floor is actually about 3ft below street level, and the main entrance is up about 6ft above street level on what would be the US 2nd floor. I live on the US 3rd floor with the bedroom up in the attic on the US 4th floor But legally (e.g. the official description as used for tax assesments etc.) the ground floor counts as a basement, what I would call the first floor is legally the ground floor, and I live on the first and second floors.

Beethoven,

There are also different conventions for shopping malls vs office buildings vs apartment/condo complexes vs hotels. The express elevators, for example, that kmar mentioned are usually office buildings, while sue and nan are more about apartments, and marcus addresses oddities in the numbering system.

I think, common-sense wise, that in the USA, we use Ground, Lobby, or 1 pretty much for the floor that is at gound-level. Then we continue with 2, 3, 4, etc, perhaps making allowances for mezzanines, balcony, or some other odd floor. The difference between USA numbering and British numbering is that the Brits do G, 1, 2, 3, etc. and we do G, 2, 3, 4, etc.

Mostly.

As Sue said, you can pretty much do whatever you want, and it sounds like Sydney's system would translate quite well to Metropolis so you would be safe numbering your floor as you are used to doing.

OK?

mmouse